Here
Standing in the hallway by the bathroom door but I can’t open it because my sister’s roommate might be in there and I can’t knock because I only met her a few hours ago when she brought a bowl of popcorn to the bar and asked about teaching English in foreign countries. The Pabst cost a dollar and the popcorn was stale and when someone found the jukebox we swallowed up and paid our tab and now it’s freezing in this house two days after Christmas and my bladder’s grinding against itself and I can’t knock on the bathroom door because she might be in there and I can’t remember her name.
There
Last night abroad, standing on a corner near our building facing the park as teenagers play badminton and numerous men run laps around the tennis courts. Nearly dark and we’re on our way to dinner and I’m listening to Billie Holiday through one speaker so I can still hear the sounds of the motorcycle taxis as they pass by the park. The clouds are making up their minds and we’re hungry so we duck into the first restaurant we pass and order noodles with chicken and vegetables again.
Between
Emirates. Airbus. A book from the eighties about a group of college freshman home for Christmas and all the drinks and drugs and clubs and cars they use as interruptions, all the beds and floors and parking lots where they lose their pants and caress release, gay and straight, confused and curious, trading terms like single and taken for rock and roll, deal with it. The back flap says it’s a seminal work by the voice of a new generation. I finish it between a movie about social workers and two episodes of Mad Men. A window seat but all I see is sky.
Both
You wake up looking at me, smiling as you stretch each limb, winding your arms around my back and drawing me to your neck and I smell our sheets and come and sweat after another night in Southeast Asia, and when we’re ready I make coffee and you make oatmeal and we smoke our cigarettes with the window open.
Here
After last night my lower abdomen feels heavy, raw. I remove two wool blankets and slide out of the sleeping bag my sister’s roommate let me borrow and now I’m back in the hallway and the bathroom door is still closed. It’s just after seven and no one else is awake so I find my tennis shoes by the front door and without tying them relieve myself from the edge of my sister’s porch. By nine the house is moving and after cereal and coffee someone enters the bathroom, pausing first to knock lightly, just enough to make a sound.
Travis Roberts grew up in Enumclaw, Washington. He’s worked in small offices, Thai classrooms, and fluorescent warehouses. You can find him in Black Heart Magazine, Eunoia Review, and The Molotov Cocktail, among others.
–Art by Karamelo
–Art by Mariya Petrova-Existencia